Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 169 



Soon after this encounter the increasing danger 

 from the Indians drove Boone back to the valley 

 of the Cumberland River, and in the spring of 1771 

 he returned to his home on the Yadkin. 



A couple of years before Boone went to Kentucky, 

 Steiner, or Stoner, and Harrod, two hunters from 

 Pittsburg, who had passed through the Illinois, 

 came down to hunt in the bend of the Cumberland, 

 where Nashville now stands ; they found vast num- 

 bers of buffalo, and killed a great many, especially 

 around the licks, where the huge clumsy beasts had 

 fairly destroyed most of the forest, treading down 

 the young trees and bushes till the ground was left 

 bare or covered with a rich growth of clover. The 

 bottoms and the hollows between the hills were 

 thickset with cane. Sycamore grew in the low 

 ground, and toward the Mississippi were to be 

 found the persimmon and cottonwood. Sometimes 



County Court, Ky. First published by Col. John Mason 

 Brown, in "Battle of the Blue Licks," p. 40 (Frankfort, 

 1882). The book which these old hunters read around their 

 camp-fire in the Indian-haunted primaeval forest a century 

 and a quarter age has by great good-luck been preserved, 

 and is in Col. Durrett's library at Louisville. It is entitled 

 the "Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift, London, MDCCLXV," 

 and is in two small volumes. On the title-page is written 

 "A Neelly, 1770." 



Frontiersmen are 'often content with the merest printed 

 trash; but the better men among them appreciate really 

 good literature quite as much as any other class of people. 

 In the long winter evenings they study to good purpose 

 books as varied as Dante, Josephus, Macaulay, Longfellow, 

 Parton's "Life of Jackson," and the Rollo stories to men- 

 tion only volumes that have been especial favorites with my 

 own cowboys and hunters. 



H VOL. V. 



